


you don't mess with love, you mess with the truth

by sofarsoperfect



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, F/F, F/M, Implied Death, M/M, Minor Bruising, Minor Burning, Non-Explicit Torture/Death, Pain, Psychoteeth, Referenced and Featured Tortured, Torture, minor blood, to date the most grim piece of work i have ever written tbqh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 06:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6413452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofarsoperfect/pseuds/sofarsoperfect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joel figured that they should’ve been more freaked out by it all, but after who knows how many days locked in a basement, taken out on days for little walks around and being tortured on any given day, it really started to screw you up. They all moved on autopilot now, going with their captors without a second thought.</p><p>There was a brief glimmer of a normal life in the far reaches of Joel’s brain. He had a nice apartment, a nice car, not a girlfriend or pet to speak of that he knew of, but it had certainly been too long to be sure of any of that. However, that seemed to baffle him as well, that if he had been as well off as he remembered, surely someone had to be looking for him, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	you don't mess with love, you mess with the truth

Ray threw a knife at the wall, the blade embedding itself next to the man’s head. He was staring straight ahead at him, the small man’s friends standing next to the the door in the corner of the room with smiles on their faces. Ray picked up another blade on the table next to him, testing the weight in his hand for a moment before launching it at the wall, this time the knife stabbing into the insulation next to his hip.

“This your idea of enjoyment?” He asked and Ray looked up from picking a knife. He smiled a little lopsided smirk and picked up the joint from the ashtray next to the knives, taking a long drag while walking towards him. Standing inches from his chest, he offered the smoke and Joel sighed but wrapped his lips around the end, taking a deep drag. 

“I haven’t hit you yet,” Ray told him and Joel smiled ruefully, blowing smoke into his face. Ray waved a hand in front of his nose and smirked a little wider. “I’ll keep that in mind in my next throw,” he told him, sticking the joint between his lips while he walked back. 

Setting it back in the tray, he picked up a new blade, a longer one, and threw it at the wall. Joel felt it when it nicked his upper arm, a sharp pain and blood beading at the thin streak of a wound. He resisted flinched and Ray grimaced exaggeratedly. 

“Sorry,” he called back. Joel figured he could have a worse fate. 

The door shut in the far corner and the empty room seemed to echo the sound of knives thudding, sinking into the wall with every throw. Ray was methodical about it, picking up most of the short bladed ones, the long ones only when Joel had managed to piss him off one way or another, the balance off and much more dangerous that way.

“They going to do dangerous experiments on Geoff and Burnie?” Joel quipped but Ray didn’t reply. A long bladed one sailed through the air and landed close to his hip, nearly nailing the material of his worn out jeans to the wall behind him. 

“You should be grateful,” Ray said, toying with a knife in his hands. “The ones we give to Ryan almost never live and Barbara is sadistic.”

“You’re not?” Joel shot back. A knife whipped past his head, sticking into the wall next to his shackled hands where they were latched to the wall in a single cuff above his head. 

“Nah. I’m a masochist,” he replied. “And you got off easy,” he told him, leaving the knives and smoldering joint behind him on the table as he walked over to Joel. “Burnie must scream when Gavin gets his hands on him and I’m surprised Geoff still has all his fingers. I just throw knives at a wall,” he pointed out.

“That I’m locked to,” he retorted, flexing his hands pointedly. Ray looked up briefly, standing a mere inches from him again. 

“But have I ever hurt you, unless you irritate me, I mean?”

Joel refrained from answering the question. Of course Ray had never gone out of his way to hurt him. He would be a little more dangerous with his throws, less careful with his hands when Joel would say things that he didn’t appreciate but he didn’t try to hurt him. Not unless it tickled his fancy, in a different sort of way. 

“You’re a psychopath,” Joel spat.

“Sociopath, but I don’t blame you,” he said, leaning up to press his mouth to Joel’s. 

The first few times he had done this, Joel had tried his damnedest to get him away from him. Ray had grabbed his face and forced him in place, kicking him in the shins when he moved to get away. He was hardly ever rough about it, unless Joel was being especially mouthy or petulant, kissing him gently and sweetly, licking his way into his mouth and sliding his hands down the smooth planes of his ribs and stomach over his button down. Joel accepted it now, the days when Ray was less moody and smoked more weed, his entire personality tempered by the drug and smoothed out with desire. 

In retrospect, Joel didn’t know how long he had been there. A few months, a year, he couldn’t be sure with his every day being the same. Well, nearly the same. Sometimes Ray really did become a masochist, whipping knives at him until he was riddled with cuts along his arms and legs, his sides scored and blood trickling down his body.

He couldn’t be sure if those were better or worse, considering they usually ended in a rough blowjob. 

Ray slipped his fingers into the belt loops of Joel’s jeans, pulling his hips against his and biting at his lower lip. His hands slid under his shirt, over his stomach and ribs and then around his back, dragging blunt nails down his back. Joel hissed and Ray hummed, pulling away to undo the buttons on his shirt, kissing down his chest and stomach, biting at the pale skin under his mouth. 

“Goddammit, Ray,” Joel moaned, and Ray looked up at him, dropping to his knees and biting along the waistband of his jeans, smirking to himself.

“You need something, Joel?” Ray antagonized him and Joel grit his teeth, hissing between him. “I didn’t think so.” Ray stood but up and pressed a lingering kiss to his mouth, dragging his nails against his scalp before fisting a handful of his hair and jerking his head back. “Ryan will take you back downstairs, soon.”

Ray turned back to roll up the knives, squashing out what remained of the joint and walked out of the room, the door shutting behind him. 

-

Burnie showed back up in the basement covered in blossoming bruises. His lips were bitten raw and of the flesh Joel could see, nearing three fourths of it was covered in yellowing fading bruises, black and blue mid healing ones or red-purple new ones. He sat down gingerly on his bunk and Joel shook his head. 

“You seen Geoff?” He asked, carefully laying himself down on the bed. 

“No,” Joel said, looking over at the door. They had seen numerous people go in and out of those doors and the ones that Ryan took with his wicked grin, well, they hardly ever returned. That was the other question Joel had. Where were these people going? He assumed them dead and his life was a mere months of disappearing as well, but fuck him if he knew what was going to happen to his body afterwards. 

“Don’t panic,” Burnie told him. “Michael liked Geoff too much to kill him,” he reminded him but Joel didn’t take much comfort in that. 

Geoff was pushed into the room by bandaged hands not long later, the skin of his fingers blistered and smelling like burnt flesh. Well, the parts of his fingers that were revealed. Most of them were wrapped up in white gauze and his eyes were watering as he flexed them.

“New science experiment?” Burnie asked, getting a stilted nod. Joel figured that they should’ve been more freaked out by it all, but after who knows how many days locked in a basement, taken out on days for little walks around and being tortured on any given day, it really started to screw you up. They all moved on autopilot now, going with their captors without a second thought.

There was a brief glimmer of a normal life in the far reaches of Joel’s brain. He had a nice apartment, a nice car, not a girlfriend or pet to speak of that he knew of, but it had certainly been too long to be sure of any of that. However, that seemed to baffle him as well, that if he had been as well off as he remembered, surely someone had to be looking for him, right? 

Burnie and Geoff talked of their previous lives on occasion too, and Ashley, the one with scores of burns on her skin but a semi-constant smile on her face. They all said they had pretty good lives, friends, perhaps a boyfriend or girlfriend, but no one had come looking for them yet. Not that they thought anyone would be able to find them.

Ashley woke up twice on the way and Joel hadn’t woken up once. Burnie remembered the sounds of planes in his dreams and Geoff a loud and rumbling train. There was the sound of sloshing water for Ashley and just a bumpy road for Geoff. Surely they had been taken to the same place, it was where they all were, but how long did they drive? None of them could remember the turns or the directions or anything distinct about the trip on their way except that it was long. Extremely long, so how far out in the middle of nowhere they were was a question on all their minds.

The rooms had windows, but they all seemed to be a singular blinding color of white and nothing but starry, black at night, the nights when they weren’t locked up. There was an out of order elevator and rooms upon rooms in the place that it reminded them of a hotel or an apartment building, but it seemed just the nine of them and Ryan’s occasional passer-by were the only ones in the entire building. And all the rooms were sound proof. Geoff had mentioned screaming before and Ashley as well, but none of them had ever heard it. 

Ashley came tumbling down the steps into the basement, not a revealed patch of skin blistered or covered in gauze, so they figured Barbara had made her strip again. She was always looking for a new place to press different shapes and sizes of burning metal against her skin.

“You okay, Ash?” Burnie asked and Ashley wiped her hands on her jeans, giving him a whimpering nod. 

That was another thing. Another odd, out of place thing in this weird place that they had to call home now.

They always had clothes. Always had new clothes when they needed them. A shower, a bath, first aid when they were hurt. It was always the bare minimum but they were never forced to suffer through their wounds and they never had to be unclean, forced to not use the bathroom, to go without the necessary clothing. It made their heads spin.

Other than the daily torture rituals, there was nothing particularly bad about it. Fed and clothed and treated, living in a place that, while run down, had never made them sick at all. Nothing was normal about it, almost paranormal in it’s existence. 

The sound of the lock on the door going caught their attentions, the door swinging open. The doorway was open and empty, which was odd to say the least. Joel started getting to his feet when a girl was shoved through the door. She was petite but curvy, bright red hair and glasses, dressed in a graphic tee, skinny jeans and sneakers. She landed on the floor with a heavy thud and the door shut behind her. 

Ashley crawled over to her, the girl weeping into her knees as she curled into a fetal position on the floor. She reached out carefully, resting a hand on the girl’s quivering shoulder. Her head snapped up, her eyes wide and fearful but Ashley gave her a soft smile and rubbed her arm.

“You’re okay,” Ashley told her, pulling her into her arms. The girl went willingly, sobbing into her shoulder and Joel looked at Geoff, he and Burnie sharing a sad look. “What’s your name, honey?”

“I- I- I’m Meg,” she hiccuped. Ashley hushed her, rubbing her back and kissing the top of her head. “I want- I wanna- I wanna go home.”

Ashley heaved a great sigh and looked at the men in the room. They averted their eyes from the trembling girl clinging to Ashley. There was no easy way to say, ‘you won’t be going home.’

Especially when, if there’s four of them, and there’s five of their captors, and they were all spoken for, she could only be going to Ryan.

-

Joel would be lying if he said there was ever a day he didn’t strain his ears for even the slightest sound of a muffled scream. His hands were still bound and there were still knives whizzing past him, embedding themselves into the wall, but, like every one of Ryan’s new victims, the first day of them being there, his mind was somewhere else. 

A knife cut through the air, the long blade slashing the side of his shirt and cutting a gash into his side. He cried out, not expecting the sudden pain to explode from his side, feeling the blood gush from the wound with every breath, a section of his flesh and his shirt nailed to the wall him.

“Good, you’re paying attention,” Ray said and Joel narrowed his eyes. Ray walked over, pulling the knife from the wall and letting it clatter against the floor as he kneeled down to inspect the wound he’d given him.

It wasn’t too deep but it shouldn’t have gone untreated so Ray grabbed the kit from his table and got started cleaning the cut, ignoring the poorly muffled groans from Joel above him. He seemed more rough than normal, cleaning him up and taping gauze to his side. 

Closing the kit, Ray walked in front of him and grabbed his chin, tilting his head down to look at him. 

“I didn’t mean to cut you so deep, but where the hell as your attention?” He asked. Joel pressed his lips into a thin line and Ray narrowed his eyes at him. “Is it Ryan’s new girl? You meet her last night?” He asked and Joel swallowed but didn’t reply. “Of course it is.”

He let go of him and took the bloody knife and kit back to the table, setting them down. 

“You shouldn’t worry,” he said, picking up another small knife. “She won’t be around for much longer.”

She was already in the basement when Ray and Ryan shoved Joel inside, tossing the key inside with the little window in the door. Joel grabbed at the tiny key, unlocking his cuffs and looking at Meg where she was sitting on her bunk. She had left first that morning and Joel was back early, having been thrown back after his injury in Ray’s care. 

“Meg?” He asked gently, rubbing at at his wrists. She lifted her head, tear tracks down her cheeks and her day old eyeliner smeared around her eyes. Her eyelashes were shorter, which explained the discarded fake lashes in the bathroom trash he saw that morning. She looked dejected and she was wringing her hands but mostly still.

“I’m not going home, am I? I’m gonna die in here?” She asked in him, but he could hear the dejected tone in her voice. She knew better already.

“I don’t know, Meg,” he told her. Of all of Ryan’s ‘guests’ she looked the best off than he’d ever seen. Ryan was down right dangerous, would cut deep gashes into people, causing stains of blood puddles on the only free bunk in the basement, bleeding out through the gauze. He never let them die in the night, though, always preferring to be the one to deal the fatal blow. He couldn’t look under her newly acquired button down but it wasn’t stained with blood and her arms were only decorated with thin, shallow cuts. 

“How many of Ryan’s have died?” She asked.

“I don’t know.” 

And as much as Joel would’ve liked to give her a number, he wasn’t sure if it would make her more at ease or not if he really, truly knew. He had seen numerous people come and go in this building, at least three before Burnie and more than that before Geoff. Ryan had been cycling before Meg and the only person who had been there longer than him was Ashley. 

Ashley told him she’d seen around ten before Geoff, several before Burnie and at least four before Joel. She didn’t know how many were before her but with each passing day she got more twitchy, more and more worried that Barbara would find her skin too full of scar to keep her around much longer and just take a knife to her instead. 

These people were serial killers, torturous serial killers who made dealing out pain a fun game. A thrilling game where they got to play with real people instead of easy maneuverable animals. They found enjoyment out of hurting others, for what reason none of them could discern but with each day, they couldn’t been sure if it was finally going to be their last. 

-

A week passed and Meg was still there. She came back from Ryan every day with more scars and more gauze, but she came back. It was a miracle to them that she hadn’t gone the way of the others, that she came back alive and breathing and there, instead of wherever her predecessors had gone.

The seventh day, Meg came into the room looking flushed and uncertain. Her arms were carved with delicate shallow scratches that spiraled up her arms and Ashley nodded to the space next to her on the bunk. Burnie had yet to come back, but Meg was looking much more worse for wear than the others. 

“What happened?” Geoff asked, leaning his forearms on his thighs.

“He… he kissed me?” She said, lifting her eyes to the others. Joel’s brow creased and Geoff’s eyes went wide, Ashley’s hand landing on her arm. 

“He kissed you?”

“Yeah. Do the- do the others do that too?” She asked. 

“Yeah,” Joel admitted.

“Nearly every day,” Geoff told her. Meg turned her attention to Ashley who nodded solemnly to her. 

The door opened and Burnie came in, groaning against the floor before picking himself. He slowly made his way to the bunks, sitting down next to Geoff, trying to stretch out the sore muscles in his back. 

“What’d I miss?” He asked.

“Ryan kissed Meg,” Geoff told him, quietly. Burnie’s head swung around to look at her, lifting his eyebrows. Meg nodded, looking down at her hands in her lap. “Hey Ash, you ever heard of Ryan kissing someone before?”

“No. Never,” she admitted. “I thought he just didn’t want to. He wasn’t interested in that kind of thing like the others,” Ashley told them, running a hand through her hair. “Fuck, what was it like?” 

“It was… is it weird if I say nice?” She asked and Ashley laughed gently. Geoff stood up to pace the room with a loud guffaw and Joel snorted. “What? Is it?” 

“No, it’s not,” Burnie answered for her. “I can’t tell if we’re just fucked up or Stockholm Syndrome is closing in on us, but it’s not at all weird if you say that. You think we go into those moments when we get kissed kicking and screaming? Sometimes I’m practically begging Gavin,” he admitted to her.

Meg’s wide eyes searched the room and none of them were denying it. It was a reflex now, getting kissed, getting bitten and nibbled and licked and none of them had put up a fight in what was sure to be months. It was almost enjoyable now, despite all the bullshit torture they went through to get to it.

“Meg, I think we can officially welcome you to the club, now,” Geoff said, turning to look at her, hands on his hips. “But here’s the question now. If they all have semi-permanent playthings, what happens now?”

The current answer was nothing. The days blurred into each other, like they did every other day. Every single day was not unlike the last, all of them ushered into their personal torture chambers and then back out every day, fed and treated and given new clothes when they were necessary. Meg was still standing every day, and, other than the knowing smirk they reported on every day afterwards on all their captors’ faces, it was average. 

They couldn’t tell how long it had been since Meg had shown up, the girl falling into their routine naturally, until they were woken up in the middle of the night. All of them were groggy and confused when they were ushered out of bed and onto the ground, on their knees. 

Shackles on their wrists and ankles, black bags on their heads, the five of them were ushered out of the room and up the stairs. Meg made quiet little whiny noises, the sound of their jingling chains being the only other thing to accompany them as they were marched from their room and to wherever their destination was. 

When their knees made contact again, it was the wet ground. Joel couldn’t remember the last time he felt something like this, his knees sinking in a little and there was a hot warmth in front of his face in front of the bag. He considered wiggling from the hands of whoever was holding him, but he knew better. He kept still while he heard the others also pushed to the ground. 

Their bags were pulled off and there was a large bonfire in front of their faces, blinding them from the quiet darkness of their room and darkness surrounding it. Joel couldn’t make out anything past the fire but he felt the shackles removed from his hands and ankles, and being told to stand up. 

“Turn around,” someone said and they all turned obediently, and Joel was standing a mere five paces in front of Ray. He was smiling softly and he looked down the line. Next to Ray was a tall, gangly man with sandy brown hair, dressed in skinny jeans and a graphic tee. Then a stocky, average height man with auburn hair and glasses, a beanie on his head. A thin blonde girl with a predatory smile and a tall man, stocky and similar in build as himself with dark blonde hair was at the end. They all had shackles in their hands and, on their hips, a gun.

“You guys have done well,” Ryan said, dropping the metal in his hands. He was standing front of Meg, smiling sweetly at her. The rest of them dropped theirs as well, Ray’s hands in his pockets. “Some of you have been here longer than others,” his eyes flickered over Joel and Ashley, “but you’ve all been here at least six months and it’s time for your final challenge.”

Joel resisted looking surprised at how long they had all been there. Six months seemed like a long time for Meg to have been there but there it was, all five of them having been there a staggering amount of time that their captors had apparently deemed long enough. 

His fear now laid in what awaited them.

“Behind you is a forest and beyond that is a small town. In the forest is five white flags. You have forty eight hours to find them, or get to the town. Be forewarned that the town is farther than the flags. Your mission, get the flags, get back here. In forty eight hours, the five of us will come find you and we will hunt you down. We have no qualms with killing.”

“I don’t understand,” Ashley admitted.

“Ashley, I love you,” Barbara said with big eyes “Which is why I want you to find the flag. We all love you, and we want you home safe. After this, we’re done.”

“What happens to us after?” Burnie asked. Gavin gave a little shrug.

“We don’t kill you, for starters,” he told him. “You ready?”

Joel looked down the line with his other survivors. It was like a twisted game of Survivor, honestly it was, and yet he was more afraid of finding cameras filming his every movement more than he was that he wouldn’t come back into Ray’s waiting arms. 

“Alright. Go,” Michael said, shooting off into the sky. 

The five of them stumbled into the woods, tripping over themselves on their way. Meg was in front, Ashley close behind and then Joel, Burnie and Geoff in the back. The five of them were on a mission and not a one of them was going to lose. 

-

Meg stumbled to a stop in the middle of a clearing, Ashley slowing to stop behind her. Burnie fell to the ground, and Geoff pressed his hands against his knees, breathing heavily.

“C’mon, we gotta find them,” Ashley said.

“There’s a town out there!” Meg said, loudly, throwing her arms out. “We could get there. We could call someone. Go home,” she said and Burnie narrowed his eyes at her.

“A town? You wanna run all the way out there, almost kill yourself to possibly die on your way there and definitely die if they catch you after 48 hours? That’s your brilliant plan!” He yelled, standing up. “I want to live! I want to find those damn flags and go the fuck back.”

“They don’t even have an end game for us!” Meg shouted back. “We go back, we’re as good as dead. There’s no way they won’t kill us now, or keep us imprisoned for the rest of our lives. This could be the last and only fucking time we have to get help and you want to run back?”

“Meg, they’ll kill you,” Ashley told her, reaching out. Meg stepped back, batting her hand at Ashley’s.

“Ryan won’t.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Joel replied. “Up until six months ago, we saw Ryan dispose of people like broken china. He didn’t give a shit until you came along. The last thing he’s worried about is keeping you alive. You may have made it this far, but do you think he’d care, at all, if he had to come out here and hunt you down? He’d put a bullet between your eyes and not think twice.”

“And you think the others care about you?” Meg asked, advancing on him. “Ray threw knives at you, Michael nearly burned Geoff’s skin off and Burnie was Gavin’s person punching bag. Ashley is more scar than skin now and I look like a circus act. If we don’t run now, what else will we have?”

“Food? Clothes? A roof over our heads?” Geoff pointed out.

“We could have that,” she said. “We could find that town, together, and we could get out.”

“And how far is the town?” Burnie retorted. “You don’t know. It could take days to get there, days we don’t have. I’d rather live by their rules than die by their hands,” he told her. “You go, you go it alone,” he warned.

“Fine!” She yelled back. Meg ran straight through the trees and they looked at each other with withering looks as her red hair began to get lost in the darkness of the trees. 

“We have a lot of ground to cover,” Ashley said, nodding in another direction, the four of them trudging through the mud and leaves on the forest floor to find their slivers of salvation. 

They didn’t sleep that whole night, walking through the dirt and trees, their clothes getting stuck on branches and thorns sticking to their skin. Burnie tripped twice, once taking Joel down with him on their way, both of them ending up slicked with mug from the waist down. It was a disaster in the making. 

“How long do you think it’ll take?” Geoff asked. 

“If they really want us back, not more than 24 hours. If they don’t, they might not even be out here,” Joel sighed. 

“Meg’s idea is looking better and better,” Ashley admitted.

“That girl is probably lost by now,” Burnie told them. 

They walked their way through the mess of the forest, Geoff turning his head when he thought he saw something. He threw out a hand, stopping Burnie and Joel, Ashley turning back when she didn’t hear footsteps behind her anymore. Geoff’s eyes were narrowing and he nodded to his right, all of them following his lead until they were looking at a tree, a large, tall tree with a string of white flags tacked halfway up.

“Who can climb?” He asked. Burnie looked at Joel, who looked at Ashley. 

“Fuck,” she swore and walked up to the tree. 

“This feels too easy,” Joel confessed while Ashley started scaling the tree. 

“Well, fuck me if it is. Maybe our death will quick if we come back with them,” she said, reaching for the string of flags. 

They gave way easily, her fingers curled around and with a gentle tug, the short tacks keeping them in the tree trunk falling around her, bouncing off her head and onto the forest floor. Ashley slid down the trunk and tore off four of the five flags, tacking the last of them back on the tree. 

“Why leave that one?” Burnie asked.

“Meg.”

“You think she’ll come back?” Geoff asked, stuffing his in his pocket. 

“Well, no reason to damn her until we know she won’t,” Ashley replied. Their flags were stuck in their pockets and they turned, trying to figure out their way back. 

There was a loud crackle above them and they all looked up. The darkness looked like it had hardly receded at all despite them being at it for hours. It was still gloomy and there was another loud crack, a bright flash taking up the entire sky.

“Told you it was too easy,” Joel said, wishing for himself to be wrong more than he’d ever had in his entire life.

The entire forest was awash with rain in seconds, pelting them with sharp, cold water, the four of them scrambling for shelter under thicker trees and ended up under a makeshift cave of two downed trees. They squished together underneath it, Ashley leaning into Burnie’s shoulder and Geoff curled in on himself to try and keep himself warm.

“Honestly, fuck this.”

They fell asleep some time during the rain, the four of them waking up to a quiet, damp forest. It was dark again and Joel slowly stood up, peering out their little shelter to try and see anything dangerous out in front of them. They couldn’t see anything and Ashley motioned them in the direction she thought they had come from. 

It lasted another set of hours, more hours than it had felt like on their way there, all of them damp and itchy from sleeping in wet clothes. The darkness was creeping in around them when they could see a light in the distance. It was big, bright and they broke into a run as they saw it, stumbling back out of the forest and nearly straight into their captors.

“You brought them?” Michael asked. 

One by one they pulled out the dirty and damp pieces of white cloth they had hastily shoved into the back pockets. One by one they were kissed by their others, but Ryan was still staring, a perplexed furrow to his brow, watching the tree line.

He didn’t ask, but they knew. He wanted to know where Meg was, what was taking her so long when all of them had showed up at once. 

“She has time,” Gavin said but Ryan didn’t stop staring at the tree line with a furrow in his brows. 

“How much time?” Joel heard Ashley ask.

“A few hours.”

They all stood out there for the remaining hours, watching for the familiar red head of hair to break the tree line. Joel could see the look of doubt on Burnie’s face, apprehension on Geoff’s and hope painting Ashley’s. She looked the most ready to run out into that forest and drag her back if she had to. 

It was only a half hour left when they heard the loud yelp from the trees. There was someone treading close to the tree line, but they couldn’t make them out. The darkness was thick now, shadowing everything except for the bright stars standing out in the sky. 

“Fuck!” They shouted and Ashley made an aborted move to the treeline. Barbara dug her fingers into Ashley’s wrist and hip, 

Breaking through, the small girl ran the rest of the way to them, stumbling into Ryan’s chest. She was holding the white cloth in her hand and practically choking on air when she reached him. He plucked the piece of fabric from her hand and leaned down, kissing the crown of her head. 

“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me,” he whispered into her hair. She seemed to visibly relax and wrapped his arms around her. 

Joel felt a gentle hand on his cheek, turning his head to look at him. Ray smiled up at him and pushed onto his toes, kissing him deeply, his tongue dragging along his lower lip and then the lines of his teeth. Joel rested his hands on his waist, glad to finally get to touch him. 

“I’m glad you came back,” Ray murmured.

“I don’t know what I would do without you anymore,” Joel confessed.

“And I, you.”

_The explosive sound of a gunshot interrupted the single moment of peace._

Joel sat up in bed, ramrod straight and with wide eyes. His chest was heaving and his skin was coated in cold sweat. His dreams had been getting progressively worse with every passing night and he reached out blindly to his left, a quiet groan releasing a soft sigh from him.

“Joel?” Ray grunted, turning over in bed. He blinked several times, slowly sitting up in bed. “Are you okay?”

“Just, uhm, the dreams again.” Ray sighed and leaned over, resting his forehead on his boyfriend’s shoulder. Pressing his lips gently to Joel’s bare shoulder, he wrapped his arms around his shirtless form, turning his head to rest his cheek there. 

“You’re starting to worry me,” he whispered.

“I think it’s over,” he told him. Ray lifted his head. Cupping his cheek in his hand, he pressed a soft kiss to his forehead and then his lips, Ray humming against his lips. “The nightmares, they feel over.”

“Good. Now go back to sleep,” Ray pleaded, pecking him on the lips again. Joel groaned and turned over, pulling Ray against his chest. Ray chuckled quietly under his breath, wiggling back against his boyfriend’s chest, Joel’s arm thrown over his waist.

There was a quiet hiss and Joel shifted his weight.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a weird, pain my side,” Joel whispered.

“You stick yourself with something?”

“I don’t think so. It’s probably nothing.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was so grim and weird and dream-like, i don't even remember why i wrote this or what prompted such a terrifying and trippy piece for me. all i know is that it is, by far, the darkest piece i've written to date.
> 
> i've also considered a secondary piece to this, to explain the dreams and how it links to the things going on in real life and not just Joel's fucked up psyche, but i haven't decided yet. 
> 
> other than that, thanks for reading and let me know in the comments below what you thought <3


End file.
